Today in Cold War History
1950 – Cold War: Harry Gold is sentenced to 30 years in jail for helping Klaus Fuchs pass information about the Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union. His testimony is later instrumental in the prosecution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.
1953 – Red Scare: General Electric announces that all communist employees will be discharged from the company.
1958 – The John Birch Society is founded in the United States.
1963 : The last American made Studebaker is produced, and the factory in South Bend, Indiana, is closed
1967 – Nicolae Ceaușescu becomes President (dictator) of Romania; overthrown in 1989
1969 – U.S. Secretary of State William P. Rogers proposes his plan for a ceasefire in the War of Attrition; Egypt and Jordan accept it over the objections of the PLO, which leads to civil war in Jordan in September 1970.
1971 – Indo-Pakistani War: The Indian Air Force executes an airdrop of Indian Army units, bypassing Pakistani defences.
1973 – Arab oil ministers announce a further production cut of 5 percent for January for non-friendly countries
1975 : New York City government avoids bankruptcy when President Gerald R. Ford signed a $2.3 billion seasonal loan authorization.
1979 – The eradication of the smallpox virus is certified, making smallpox the first and to date only human disease driven to extinction.
1981 : A Soviet submarine, stuck in the mud off of Sweden’s shores, provided a lot of sport for the pacifist nation. The Soviets had approached Sweden in a menacing manner with warships, however, Swedish authorities insisted on boarding the submarine. In the end the superpower’s submarine crew had to ask for Sweden’s help to get back to the Baltic Sea – a humbling experience.
1983 – US Attorney General Edwin Meese says people go to soup kitchens “…because food is free & that’s easier than paying for it”. Democratic leaders and social welfare activists called his comments “disgraceful”, “an outrage”, “unkind and mean-spirited” and “absolutely ridiculous.” Tip O’Neill, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, compared Meese to Ebenezer Scrooge. Shortly after, Meese offered a tongue-in-cheek defense of Scrooge, saying that he “had his faults, but he wasn’t unfair to anyone” and that he suffered from “a bad press”.
1985 – In Argentina, five former military junta members received sentences in prison for their roles in the “dirty war” in which nearly 9,000 people had “disappeared.”
1990 : Solidarity founder Lech Walesa wins Poland’s presidential runoff by a landslide

My goal with this blog is to offend everyone in the world at least once with my words… so no one has a reason to have a heightened sense of themselves. We are all ignorant, we are all found wanting, we are all bad people sometimes.